A white male Californian named Roger Stockham was arrested earlier this week when he was caught by police in Dearborn, MI with explosives. Stockholm has been charged with “one count on a threat of terrorism or false report and one count of explosive-possession of bombs with unlawful intent for possession” based on an alleged plot to bomb a mosque in Dearborn, Michigan. Stockham, allegedly made threats against the mosque and stated he came to the Detroit Metropolitan Area in Michigan because of the high percentage of Muslims who reside there. He was literally arrested while sitting in his car in the parking lot of one of the largest mosques in America:
cont.
The suspect was arrested in the parking lot of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn on Monday, while hundreds were inside the mosque that sits along Ford Road, police said. […]
“He’s very dangerous,” Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad told the Free Press. “We took his threat to be very serious.” […]
“He’s had a long history of being angry with the United States government,” Haddad said. […]
Haddad said that a witness said that Stockham was planning to blow up the mosque. The suspect “appeared to be acting alone,” Haddad said. “His threat has been mitigated.”
An employee at a local bar called police after overhearing violent threats allegedly made by the man, Islamic Center of America Executive Administrator Kassem Allie said. The employee was afraid that Stockham was going to target Muslims or Arabs in the area, he said. […]
Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly said the suspect “had a lot of high-end fireworks.”
“It was the max you could buy legally.”
They were not “conventional explosives,” O’Reilly said. “But at that level, those things misused are terrific weapons.”
Obviously, this is no longer the type of incident that surprises anyone these days. Not after the Tucson Massacre. Not after the murder of two nine year old girls in Arizona by politically motivated terrorists, one white (Christina Green) and one Hispanic (Brisenia Flores).
And certainly not after the foiled bomb plot in Spokane, Washington, where a sophisticated bomb laced with metal fragments and a chemical found in rat poison, located along the route of a parade held to honor Martin Luther King , was discovered and defused before it could be detonated with the intent to kill and maim as many parade participants as as possible:
CNN, citing a law enforcement official, confirmed that the chemical is found in rat poison and that the shrapnel consisted of small metal pellets. The Spokesman-Review first reported the chemical-shrapnel mix Tuesday, noting that rat poison is used to prevent blood from coagulating.
No, the report of another crazed right wing terrorist intent on attacking one of the many “enemies of America” that hate radio and conservative television hosts rail about on a daily basis can hardly be said to be surprising. Nor is the fact that President Obama’s Tucson Memorial speech seeking a respite in the use of such violent and hatefukl invective against Gays, Liberals, Democrats, Hispanics, African Americans, and Muslims (to name but a few groups targeted by conservative hate mongers) has been met with disdain and rejected by the very same propagators of the hatred evidenced by the “lone wolf” whack jobs they clearly mean to incite (in my humble opinion).
We have heard no apologies from Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly or Sarah Palin or Michelle bachmann (or the many other lesser lights of the conservative and Tea Party Movement who mimic their rhetoric) for the violent acts to which such reckless and hateful speech invariably leads. We have heard Republican and Tea Party Senator Mike Lee make the ridiculous and inane claim that toning down the hate filled rhetoric from the right would allow the Tucson shooter to win as if this is all just a game and the deaths and injuries suffered by the victims of Tucson are irrelevant to our political discourse.
We have seen Sarah Palin’s gall on display when she stated that she was the real victim of the shooting because her “targeting of Democrats” by placing sniper scope cross hairs over their Congressional Districts (including the district of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords) was criticized as dangerous and threatening. We’ve known that former Democratic Congressman Dreihaus had a brick thrown through the window of his home and received death threats after now Speaker of the House John Boehner issued a statement last March that that Dreihaus “may be a dead man” if he returned to his home district after voting for health care reform:
Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of West Chester warned that anti-abortion Democrats would suffer politically if they voted for the health care bill, singling out Rep. Steve Driehaus by saying he “may be a dead man” and that he “can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati” because “the Catholics will run him out of town.” […]
Driehaus’ press secretary Tim Mulvey complained today about the “far-right-wing” Whistleblower publishing Driehaus’ home address. Here’s what he said:
The Whistleblower, a far-right-wing publication in Cincinnati, today published Rep. Driehaus’s home address with a link to directions, urging readers to protest at the Congressman’s home this Sunday. Today’s headline in The Whistleblower is “Tea Party Vows Revenge.”
This comes during the same one-week period that a right-wing special interest group published a photo of Rep. Driehaus and his children, the local Democratic Party headquarters in Cincinnati had a brick thrown through its front window, and Rep. Driehaus’s office received death threats.
So, the fact that a right wing nut job planned to bomb a mosque and kill innocent Muslims in attendance there is not surprising. Sadly, despite the President’s appeal and the best efforts of all decent Americans who know that a political culture that devolves into nothing more than scapegoating and blaming one’s opponents for all the nation’s ills does a disservice to all Americans. Such angry, distasteful and dangerous rhetoric puts innocent lives at risk. Yet, it seems the violent language of the right and the on-going demonization of their political opponents and minorities will not stop. Therefore, we can expect more incidents like the Tucson Massacre, and further attempts by right wing domestic terrorists which were narrowly averted in Spokane and Dearborn in our immediate future.